Vision for the daysailor?

Post by **dasein668** » Mon May 19, 2003 8:08 am

I've seen Tim eyeing this boat quite a lot recently... I think this is his newest vision for the daysailor.

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Mon May 19, 2003 9:32 am

So THAT'S what Palawan was supposed to look like!!!!!

Post by **dasein668** » Mon May 19, 2003 9:54 am

Hehe

Yeah, Direktor really bodged it up to Palawan the way she looks today! hehe

Post by **Tim** » Mon May 19, 2003 1:16 pm

Well, I was going to keep my new concept a secret, but since Nathan's let the cat out of the bag, let me take a moment to analyze the features of this design that I think makes it so successful in my eyes.

1. The outboard rudder on the stern just adds a certain finesse and style to the overall look that is sadly lacking in boats with those invisible inboard rudders. And the fact that the designers eschewed that silly trend to incorporate curves and gentle contours into boat parts by making the rudder a perfect rectangle only adds to the visual pleasure.

2. The short mast height prevents that irritating top-heavy look that occurs with those boats with tall masts, which I find tends to detract from the attractive, boxy, high topsides. Plus, it's a boon to safety to be able to reach the masthead while standing on deck--prevents the need for those unsafe bosun's chairs.

3. The full canvas bimini and enclosure, surrounded by those attractive cabin trunks, proves to me that my concept of a full-height, standing-headroom vertical plywood enclosure around the cockpit will be a design appearance winner.

4. One of the other features I really like, and hope to emulate, is that the compression post for the mast is directly at the base of the companionway. This is good for arresting those uncontrolled falls down the companionway in heavy weather. Good thought on the part of the Dawson design team!

5. I also always find it good to make sure that people know what kind of boat they're looking at. To that end, the Dawson 26 excels, since the model name is emblazened on the hull in a minimum of three places, just to ensure that there's no hidden angle where one might miss seeing it.

6. I also find aft cabins in boats of this size, especially daysailors, to be extremely useful by blocking access to the stern and limiting the feeling of "being on the water" that most people in sailboats tend to try to avoid. The more obstacles one can put in place, the better, I always say.

7. The steering pedestal--which of course is an important feature when striving for the desirable goal of cluttering up the available cockpit space--features a built-in dive helmet, which makes overboard plunges to clear the propeller from those annoying lobster pots a cinch.

I believe it would be hard to improve upon such an impeccable design. Kudos to the fine folks at Dawson Yachts!

Tim

Post by **Tim** » Mon May 19, 2003 1:19 pm

Well, I did find one way to make a possible improvement.

I find it's always good to stick a 150 HP outboard engine on the stern of a sailboat. Sailing can be just so...slow sometimes, and this is just the ticket.

Tim

Post by **dasein668** » Mon May 19, 2003 9:03 pm

More on the fine Dawson Yacht...

http://www.blackflute.com/sailing/srspecs.html

Post by **Tim** » Tue May 20, 2003 6:47 am

OOO!

Just when I thought the boat wasn't stupid enough, I see that it also came with a ketch rig option. Just what every 26', center cockpit, aft cabin, camper-canvassed centerboard trailerable sailboat needs.

Tim

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:23 pm

This is my neighbor for the winter. Hunter 320, or 326, or something like that. After getting up close and personal with the boat yesterday during haulout, I lump it with the Dawson and the MacGregor (?) above.

ok, so it's pure clorox-bottle. I can forgive that, to a point.
so you have trouble walking on deck without stepping on a hatch... I dunno why a 32' boat needs THREE foredeck hatches, but whatever.

Check out the rig.

The traveler is mounted atop that steel-pipe "radar arch" thingy over the cockpit. At first I thought that was just a folded-and-gathered bimini, but no, it's the traveler. I'm thinking that this is either a structural nightmare, or it's built hell for stout, which puts a lot of weight in a really strange location.

This contraption also prevents the use of a backstay, so the shrouds are led rather far aft, with spreaders swept back perhaps 30 degrees. Sailing dead-downwind isn't always my cup of tea either, but that's just ridiculous!

You may not be able to make them out in that photo, but this rig (aesthetically at least) appears to employ the X-bracing concept of the last series of America's Cup boats. Again.... it's only a 32' boat, the rig shouldn't be all that hard to support.

The icing on the cake: A pair of compression struts that extend from the chainplates to the mast, about 4' up from the deck. God help the poor slob that needs to go forward of the mast.

Post by **Tim** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 5:01 pm

That's a Bergstrom & Ridder (B&R) rig. They've been around for a long time, but have never really gained favor. Lars Bergstrom and Warren Luhrs (founder, etc. of Hunter) go way back, so the collaboration on the rig was natural.

Not being an engineer, I don't quite get why the B&R rig was ever supposed to be an advantage of any type on any boat, although I think part of the idea was that the swept-back spreaders made for quicker tacking and perhaps a tighter sheeting angle. There used to be a race boat here (a 40' Holland--ex Agape--that had been the US defender of the Canada's Cup in about 1978 or 1979, against the C&C-designed Evergreen) that had one of these B&R rigs, complete with struts and cross shrouds. It DID have a backstay, however. The rig was very slender and bendy, which I suppose is the point. On a serious race boat, I can get behind whatever goofiness is necessary. On a cruising boat, it's just a gimick.

I have heard serious concerns about the lack of backstay support on these Hunter rigs when going offwind in more of a blow. By carrying the spreader sweepback to an extreme, the fine design team at Hunter apparently came to the conclusion that they could do away with the backstay. Maybe, but that's a lot of rig up there. No thanks!

No words can adequately express my disdain for the silly arch/traveler thingie. Barf. Inefficient. Ugly. Rickety. Potentially unsafe. Comical.

It's kind of sad that in today's new-boat market, this Hunter is the sort of thing you're faced with, if you don't have the considerable means needed to look at the very few small (sub 35') boats built by quality builders. I guess it's all about profit and greed, not about building good boats, be they small or large. Whatever.

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 9:54 am

Tim wrote: On a serious race boat, I can get behind whatever goofiness is necessary. On a cruising boat, it's just a gimick.

I have heard serious concerns about the lack of backstay support on these Hunter rigs when going offwind in more of a blow.

Gimmick. Precisely my point. Same goes for the overabundance of hatches. Gimmickery. (hey, it's a word in MY book!)

As for the lack of backstay support when going offwind..... a number of beach cat builders experienced these same failures when people started pushing the envelope with the assymetric spinnakers about 5 years ago. The sailors came up with the solution before the builders did: Keep the main sheeted tight. The sail stabilizes the mast.

Dave, 397 · Post by **Dave, 397** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 12:35 pm

I don't think it is at all about greed on the boatbuilders' part...It is market-driven as far as I am concerned.

Take a look at the average buyer of one of these..I mean, a real good look. Know how to sail? Know about sailboats? Rarely. Thinks he does, though--thinks he can buy seamanship at West Marine in a can. Part of this cultural thing we have going where it is believed that the answer to every problem is to throw money at it.

Take a good hard look at the boats...most of them cannot really be called sailboats, as they cannot sail in all conditions...some only in a fairly narrow window of idealized conditions. Lots of accesories that take lots of power, too...but to most of these folks, the trip's ruined if the icemaker quits.

What we are really looking at here is a motorsailor...but those old motorsailors all looked too ridiculous even to the uninitiated. Most people buying today wouldn't know the difference anyhow, and if they were faced with a real sailboat, they'd buy a trawler. These are people who want to buy the IDEA and some sort of IMAGE of being a "sailor" without actually ever DOING it . So, the boats are motorsailors built around a kitchen, bathroom and all the discomforts of (shoreside) homes to please the wife, slicked up and made to look sorta sporty in disguise of what they actually are to please the guy's wanna-be aesthetics, and always, of course, fitted with a wheel so they steer like a car, and so the self-important jerk who bought it can feel like a big man. Often seen tossing beer cans over the side while sporting a CG Auxiliary Mustang Vest, at least around here.

What this all begs, of course, is the question of what is to become of it all...if this is market-driven, that means that very few people in America are actually learning to SAIL for real, and equally few are even interested. This is disturbing...the Alerion Express is a very spendy, niche-market boat...but one of the few truly decent sailboats still made. Ditto the J-boats. Spendy. What we need is a new Pearson Ariel, that kind of a boat with that kind of a price point...but we need folks that want to buy. Look at our Tritons...or the Ariel...even the Vanguard. If a boat like that was being produced today, would anyone buy them? I wonder...but I don't think they'd sell the way they did back when. Unfortunate, isn't it?

Dave

David · Post by **David** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 2:04 pm

I think the typical hunter owner in Florida has often moved down from a powerboat to a 30-something sparkling new Hunter. Recently the owner of such a yacht and his girlfriend were preparing for a passage to Key West as a low pressure system approached Tampa Bay from the west. The guy was drunk and occasionally relieved himself off the dock; his girl friend looked bored with the whole thing. The only preparation the owner made was to rig a high intensity hand-held spotlight "so we can see at night" and departed half lit at dusk with his high beam pointing the way--no sails set, just his diesel giving him hull speed through the marina.

Not my idea of sailing...but hey it doesn't cost him 2-grand in fuel to visit Key West the way it did when he owned his Sea Ray...

Post by **Tim** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 3:01 pm

All I can think about with people like that on sailboats is a line from the movie "What About Bob", with Bill Murray. I didn't see the movie, but I remember a scene in the trailer where Bill Murray is tied to the mast of a small sailboat, and joyfully cries, "I'm SAILING!". (I think he played a character who was disturbed or slow or whatever...)

I can see an owner like the one described above doing exactly that as he pilots his be-arched, multi-hatched, silly-rigged boat out the harbor.

"Look at me, I'm SAILING!"

Probably while wearing a jaunty captain's hat. With scrambled eggs, of course.

I get a kick out of recent ads for Hunter in magazines, in which they tout "Antimonious lead keels". Woo-hoo! Boy, where's my nearest dealer?

I know, I know...Beneteaus have cast iron keels. And Beneteau is Hunter's main competitor. Still, it just comes across as funny. Kind of like seeing a car advertised as coming with "four tires standard".

Or is it just me? After all, I have been working with epoxy today...

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 3:39 pm

Dave, 397 wrote:
What we are really looking at here is a motorsailor...

You hit the nail square on the head there, Boyo!

My club hires Brownell to haul the sailboats and large powerboats with their hydraulic trailer, and this year was my first experience with the evolution. Between helping my father haul his boat and tending to odds&ends on Figment, I watched a few of the others just to familiarize myself with the process. All of these other boats approached the trailer with teeth clenched (most were awfully twitchy with the gearstick), nudged the pads with the bow, and then POURED ON THE POWER to wedge themselves up firmly into the pads while the trailer pulled out of the water. The owner of that Hunter hit so hard he nearly lost his foredeck crew over the side!

This made me nervous, I don't mind telling you. My A4 doesn't put out anywhere near that kind of power! When my turn came, I tapped the Brownell driver on the shoulder and expressed my concern. He responded with a twinkle in his eye (he has an old Allied Seawind ketch) "aw, don't pay any attention to these throttlejockeys. I've got the rear pads up under them as soon as they hit the fronts! Some folks just don't feel right unless they can hear the engine roaring." I thought this was an interesting observation to make of a group of SAILORS.

I also fully agree with the "buy seamanship in a can at West Marine". Case in point, this Hunter's owner left the engine running out of the water.
"What's that noise? Is your engine still running?"
"uh, no I think that's the powerwasher you're hearing."
(holding hand up to exhaust now) "No, I'm pretty sure you're still running. Might want to go up and kill it, eh?"
The boat had been out of the water for a full 10 minutes. I wonder what the temp guage read?

Tim, rent "What About Bob". It'll earn the $3.50.

Post by **dasein668** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 9:23 pm

Figment wrote: The boat had been out of the water for a full 10 minutes. I wonder what the temp guage read?

Yeah, and I'm sure the impeller looks great too... but of course, your hunter owner probably won't bother to check... *sigh*